Taiwanese EMI Teachers’ Views of the Role of Language Support for Students in their Disciplines

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of English, Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

2 Faculty of Education, The University of Sydney, Australia

10.30466/ijltr.2026.56372.3093

Abstract

In EMI, an important issue concerns how content-area teachers perceive their roles in supporting students' development of English. This study addressed the issue by comparing EMI teachers across four disciplines to explore how the content they taught affected the kind of language support they provided in EMI classes. The study was conducted with 81 university-level EMI teachers in Taiwan. The findings revealed how teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of their students’ English proficiency were related to the subject matter they taught. Teachers in the “hard sciences” (e.g., engineering) gave more attention to content than language, while those in “soft sciences” (e.g., arts and humanities) subjects made greater use of strategies that developed both content knowledge and effective language skills. The study highlights the need for a discipline-based approach to EMI professional development, enabling EMI teachers to integrate language support for EMI students with disciplinary content and learner needs.

Keywords

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
Volume 14, Issue 1
March 2026
Pages 1-25

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History

  • Receive Date: 18 July 2025
  • Revise Date: 24 August 2025
  • Accept Date: 20 April 2026

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